Your Face Tomorrow: Poison, Shadow, and Farewell (43 page)

The man who was now very probably Custardoy continued on along Carrera de San Jeronimo, past my hotel, where he peered in at the entrance and read the plaque there which states, incredibly, that the Palace Hotel was conceived, designed and built in the brief space of fifteen months spanning 1911 and 1912, by the Leon Monnoyer construction company, who were, I suppose, French or Belgian, I don't know how the builders of today—that plague, that horde—can hold up their heads for shame or indeed shamelessness; a little further on, more or less opposite the Parliament building, he paused momentarily by the statue of Cervantes—who also had his sword unsheathed—there were some police vans parked there, with five or six policemen armed with machine guns standing outside to protect the honorable members, even though there were none to be seen, they must all have been inside or off on a trip somewhere or in one of the bars. The man with the ponytail and mustache had clearly retrieved something else from the museum coatcheck, a briefcase with no handles, into which he must have put his sketchbook, and he was carrying said briefcase under his arm and walking quickly, confidently, head up, eyes front, looking frankly about him and at the people he passed, and I had quite a fright when, as he was passing Lhardy, he slowed his pace and turned his head to observe the legs of a girl with whom he had almost collided, possibly deliberately I thought. I was afraid he might see me and recognize me, I mean from before, from the Prado. His response to the young woman was very Spanish, one I often have myself, although whenever I turned round like that in London, I had the sense that I was the only man who did, less so in Madrid, although there are fewer and fewer men who dare to look at whatever we want to, especially when the person we're looking at can't see us and has her back to us, which means that we're not bothering or embarrassing anyone—in these increasingly repressive times the puritans are even trying to control what our eyes do, often quite involuntarily. His was a quick, appreciative, brazen glance, with those large dark marble-like eyes of his, intense and troubling, wide-set and lashless, which more or less coincided with what Cristina had told me about the way he visually grabbed at women; but perhaps that was an exaggeration, I myself sometimes look in a similar way at a passing derriere or a pair of legs as they move off, perhaps with less penetrating appraising eyes, more ironic or more amused. His eyes looked as if they were salivating.

If when he arrived at the ruined Puerta del Sol, he continued straight on, if he didn't go down into the metro and didn't catch a bus or a taxi, we would be on the right track, that is, heading for Custardoy's house or workshop or studio, and then there'd be no further room for doubt that he was he. I feared for a moment that he was about to deviate from that route when, at the beginning of Calle Mayor, he crossed the street, but I was reassured at once to see that he was merely going into a rather fine-looking bookshop, Mendez by name. From the other side of the street, through the shopwindow, I saw him greet the owners or employees affectionately (patting them on the arm; and he was again polite enough to take off his hat, which was something), and he must have made some funny comment because they both laughed, a burst of generous spontaneous laughter. He left after a few minutes, carrying a bag from the bookshop, so he must have bought something, and I wondered what sort of thing he would read, then he crossed back onto my side of the road, and I retreated a few steps, until there was the same distance between us as there had been since we left the museum. However, I had to stop again almost at once and make a slow withdrawal from an ATM, in order to gain time and not overtake him, because he met a female acquaintance or friend—I caught a glimpse of blue eyes—a young woman in trousers, with short hair and a fringed suede jacket, a la Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett or General Custer when they skewered him. She smiled warmly at him and planted a kiss on each cheek, he must live in the area; they chatted animatedly for a few minutes, she obviously liked him (he didn't take off his hat this time, but at least he touched the brim with his fingers when he saw the young woman, the classic gesture of respect in the street), and she laughed loudly at something he said ('He's the sort of man who makes people laugh, like me when I want to,' I thought. 'That could explain why Luisa likes him. Bad luck. Bad news'). No one would ever suspect that he hit women, or one particular woman, the woman who still mattered most to me.

He said goodbye and continued on his way; he walked with great resolve, almost fiercely sometimes when he increased the pace, he would never be bothered by any of the pickpockets or muggers who abound in that touristy area and who, for preference, fleece the Japanese; perhaps beggars would leave him alone too, his walk was that of someone who, however pleasant, is not open to overtures of that kind; and the duty of beggars and thieves is to recognize this at once and to sense who they're dealing with. He proceeded on past the San Miguel market on his left, where the road went slightly downhill. On the wall of a building I noticed a carved inscription which said soberly, gravely: 'Here lived and died Don Pedro Calderon de la Barca,' the dramatist on whom Nietzsche, in his day, was so keen, as indeed was the whole of Germany; and a little further along, on the other side, a more modern plaque indicated: 'In this place stood the Church of San Salvador, in whose tower LuisVelez de Guevara set the action of his novel
El diablo cojuelo—The Devil Upon Two Sticks
—1641,' a book it had never occurred to me to read, not even when I was at Oxford, but Wheeler, Cromer-Blake and Kavanagh would surely have known it. Custardoy went over for a moment to a statue immediately opposite, in Plaza de la Villa, how odd that a painter should be so attracted to the three-dimensional. 'To Don Alvaro de Bazan' was all it said underneath, the Admiral in command of the Spanish fleet at the Battle of Lepanto, where Cervantes was wounded in 1571, losing the use of his left hand when he was only twenty-four, which meant that he could justifiably refer to himself as 'a complete man albeit missing a hand' in the same lines of farewell that I had quoted to Wheeler, even though he didn't want to hear them: farewell wit, farewell charm, farewell dear, delightful friends. There, too, was the Torre de los Luxanes, where it is said Francis I of France was held prisoner after being captured by the Spanish during the battle of Pavia in 1525; but since various other places in Spain also claim that he was held captive there, either a lot of people are lying or the Emperor Charles V trailed the French king round the country, exhibiting him like a monkey or a trophy.

Custardoy was still on the right track, the one that should lead him to his house, straight down Calle Mayor, and with me right behind, his rather distant or detached shadow. 'I've spent some time now being a shadow,' I thought, 'I have been and am a shadow at Tupra's side, accompanying him on his journeys and talking to him almost every day, always by his side like a subaltern, an interpreter, a support, an apprentice, an ally, occasionally a henchman ("No doubt, an easy tool, deferential, glad to be of use"). Now I'm playing shadow to this man whom I'm not even sure is the man I'm looking for, but as regards him, I'm none of those other things; I'm a sinister, punitive, threatening shadow of which he as yet knows nothing, as is usually the case with those walking behind, who cannot be seen; it would be better for him if he did not continue along this route, or if his route turned out not to be the one I hope for and desire.' Just after thinking this, I thought he might escape me, because when he reached the Capitania General or Consejo de Estado (where soldiers bearing machine guns stood outside the first door), he again crossed the street as if he were about to go into the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, which is immediately opposite. Except that he didn't, he went down a narrow street just beyond that, and I felt really alarmed: surely, at this late stage, he wasn't going to turn out not to be he and not approach that ornate door before which I had stood on two occasions now. At the end of that street, very short and for pedestrians only, I saw him disappear to the left and I quickened my pace slightly to not lose track of him, and to find out where he was going, and when I reached that same point, he very nearly did see me: there, in the corner, was an old bar, El Anciano Rey de losVinos, where he took a seat outside, looking obliquely across towards the Palacio Real; in Madrid, what with global warming, it's almost like summer for nearly six months of the year, and so there are tables and chairs set outside cafes and bars long after and long before the appropriate seasons. I immediately turned round to hide my face from him and pretended to read, like a tourist, another metal plaque just above me (and, of course, I did read it): 'Near this place stood the houses of Ana de Mendoza y la Cerda, Princess of Eboli, and in one of them she was arrested by order of Philip II in 1579.' She was the one-eyed woman, an intriguer and possibly a spy, who had doubtless in her day spread outbreaks of cholera, malaria and plague, as Wheeler had done, or so he said, and doubtless Tupra too, or perhaps the latter had merely lit the fuses that provoked great fires. (No age is free of such contagions; in every age there are people bearing flaming torches and people who talk.) The lady was always shown wearing an eye-patch, over her right eye I seemed to recall from seeing some portrait of her, and I thought, too, that I had watched a movie about her, starring Olivia de Havilland.

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Custardoy placing his order with the waiter, and I walked back down the street as far as Calle Mayor, pondering what to do next, apart, that is, from keeping well out of the way. There was a ridiculous statue there, which Custardoy, showing excellent taste, had not stopped to look at; it was one of the many 'anonymous' pieces that fill our cities (in the name of 'democratizing' monuments, a contradiction in itself), but the fellow looked suspiciously like Hemingway, patron saint of tourists. And there was another plaque high up on the wall, that said: in this street, Juan Escobedo, secretary to John of Austria, was killed on March 31, 1578, on the night of Easter Monday.' Again this rang a bell with me, that murky murder; perhaps the Princess of Eboli had been involved, although it would have been very stupid of her to order an enemy to be killed right next to her house. (Later, I checked, and apparently it's still not known if the murder was carried out on orders from the Princess, from Philip II himself or from Antonio Pérez, his scheming secretary, who ended up being sent into exile; an as yet unsolved crime four and a bit centuries later, there in that narrow street which, at the time, was called Camarin de Nuestra Senora de Almudena. But why do I say 'still' or 'as yet,' in some cases the passing of time serves no purpose, so much remains unknown, denied, hidden, even as regards ourselves and our own actions.) 'What a lot of one-eyed, one-handed, hobbling people there have been in these old streets,' I found myself thinking, 'what a lot of deaths. They won't notice one more, should it come to that.'

I decided to take a few short turns about the surrounding area, so that I could return every so often to a point from which I could keep an eye on Custardoy and his movements from afar, I couldn't risk missing the moment when he paid his bill, got up and set off again, from El Anciano Rey de los Vinos to what I presumed was his house, just steps away; he would only have to cross two streets. And so I moved a little way off and stopped before another statue in Calle Bailen, this time a rather rough bust of the admirable
madrileño
writer Larra, who committed suicide in 1837 by shooting himself in the head while standing in front of the mirror, before he was even twenty-eight (another member of the Kennedy-Mansfield fraternity, of which there are so many), perhaps over some unhappy love affair, but who knows; and then I stopped by yet another sculpture, slightly grotesque this time, of a certain Captain Melgar, all medals and curled mustaches—he reminded me somewhat of Tupra's improbable ancestor in the portrait by Kennington I had seen at his house— and who, according to the inscription, had died in the battle of Barranco del Lobo, in Melilla, during the African War, in 1909; it wasn't so much the actual bust of the Captain that was grotesque as a second disproportionately small figure—not so small as to be a Lilliputian or Tom Thumb, but certainly a midget—of a soldier dressed like Beau Geste and who was trying to climb up the pedestal or column with his rifle in his hand, whether to worship his Captain or to attack him and finish him off wasn't clear. And then I walked back the way I had come—although on the other side of the street this time, the same side as the Catholic monstrosity-—and studied Custardoy where he sat outside the cafe. He had been served a beer, some anchovies and some
patatas bravas
('So he treats himself to a proper aperitif, does he?' I thought. 'He obviously feels he's worked hard enough and he's in no hurry, he'll certainly be there for a while'), and had unfolded a newspaper, which he was sitting reading, legs crossed, now and then looking around with his huge eyes, which meant I had to be prudent, and so I again moved off, this time going as far as the Palacio Real, only to discover more hideous statues, a constant feature in Madrid: a whole line of Visigothic kings dressed like pseudo-Romans and each bearing a barely comprehensible inscription, especially for a foreigner, and I was feeling rather like a foreigner: 'Ataúlfo, Mu. A° de 415,' said the first one, and the same enigmatic inscription (meaning presumably
Murió Año de . . .
He died in the year . . .) accompanied Eurico, 'de 484,' Leovigildo, 'de 585,' Suintala, 'de 633,' Wamba, 'de 680'. . . Further on, stood a large monument, 'erected at the instigation of Spanish women to the glory of the soldier Luis Noval,' who must have been a heroic soldier and obviously the darling of the ladies, for he, too, was dressed like Beau Geste or Beau Saberur or Beau Ideal or all of them put together:
'Patria, no olvides nunca a los que por ti mueren, MCMXII;
My country, never forget those who died for you, MCMXII' (that word
'patria'
would have to be translated as 'country,' the word used by Tupra on the night we first met and which had made me wonder if he might, in spirit, be a fascist in the analogical sense). But my country forgets everyone, both those who die for it and those who don't, including that fellow Noval—why, no one in Madrid will have the faintest idea who he was or how he distinguished himself or what he did. Every time I retraced my steps, and the cafe terrace once more came within my field of vision, the more settled the man with the ponytail seemed to be, and so I decided to set off in another direction and walk down Cuesta de la Vega, 'Near here stood the site of Puerta de la Vega, the main entrance into Muslim Madrid, from the ninth century onwards' and 'Image of Maria Santisima de la Almudena, hidden in this place in the year 712 and miraculously rediscovered in the year 1085' ('They hid it in the year following the Moorish invasion,' I thought, 'presumably so that it wouldn't be destroyed.' But that very white effigy of the Virgin and Child, placed in a niche, didn't look remotely like something made in the eighth century or even a replica of one, but was a shameless fake; Custardoy would have known), and even got as far as Parque de Atenas, where the inevitable bust, almost hidden this time because of the isolated position in which it had been placed, was of no less a person than the jubilant Boccherini, who lived for twenty or more years in Madrid and died here in penury, never having been honored by this ungrateful city (it's not even known where his bones lie or if there was a grave to give them shelter); behind him was a stone plaque bearing the words of someone called Cartier which said: if God wanted to talk to mankind through music, He would use the works of Haydn; but if He Himself wanted to listen to music, he would choose Boccherini.' Yes, his music, like Mancini's, accompanied me wherever I went.